Hi Reddit! I’m Shefali Luthra, a journalist at Kaiser Health News. We’re a non-profit news service (no relationship to Kaiser Permanente), and we cover health care with constant attention to how it affects patient pocketbooks. Our stories are published news outlets nationwide, including The Washington Post, CNN and The New York Times. I just did a story on hospitals partnering with financial institutions, and encouraging patients to take out on-the-spot loans to pay off their medical bills. Here’s the story (inspired by Redditors!) as it ran in The Washington Post, and here’s a longer version from our website. Our newsroom does a “bill of the month” feature in partnership with NPR, taking reader medical bills and putting them under a microscope. I’m excited to take all of your questions, but I’m especially excited to discuss how the high costs of health care affect patients. Thanks for having me! • Here’s my proof • Here’s Kaiser Health News’ website, which features our most recent stories • Here’s our bill-of-the-month club landing page.

EDIT: It's been so much fun doing this -- and I know there is much more we could discuss! -- but I've got to get back to reporting and writing. Thanks all of you for your thoughtful questions, and we'll definitely be planning more AMAs from KHN in the future. Until next time!

Do you have any friends left with the Amish? If so, what is your relationship with them? I was raised in the hutterites, and had to abandon my friends and family when I left. What is the Amish church's position towards people like yourself who escape?

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What are your legislative priorities for Missouri? How do you feel about the alleged misconduct of Governor Grietens?

I work in healthcare as a FF/EMT and have worked in hospitals. I have noticed the industry uses a blanket type coverage to bill patients. Even I have been to the emergency room and later received a bill which included medication I did not accept at the time of the service. I also know if a patient goes into the ER for cardiac related problems and the “crash cart” is needed, even if they only use one medication from a drawer it could end up costing the pt tens of thousands of dollars. How has the effect of outrageous medical costs caused people/organizations/government to rethink the structure of billing? What would be the most common sense approach to make this a reality today?

I prefer the cookies you get on United or American, even though I try hard to watch what I eat. I used to weigh 368 pounds, and I have to work hard to keep my weight down.

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It all started for me when I moved to Chamonix, France at 23 years old. I've skied my entire life but didn't start climbing until I was 19. In Chamonix I learned how to put all of it together, the glaciers, ice climbing, rock climbing, route-finding skiing etc. I lived there for 6 years. It was like a second university.

To me, this story is not just the story of a ten year revenge plot, it's really the story of all conspiracies. You know we live in this world of conspiracy theories (I happen to live in Austin, the hometown of Alex Jones) but few actual conspiracies. But any student of history knows that the world often pivots on something a few people cooked up in secret. So to me, this book was a chance to tell that larger story. The fact that Thiel was willing to go on the record and explain his process was, in my view as an author, an unprecedented chance to lay out how power really works in a way that few have been able to before. It's ironic, Gawker's informal motto was that they showed "How Things Work"--the story behind the story. But in this case, they missed what was actually happening. So did everyone in the media. What I tried to do here was step back, take judgment out of the picture, and show what went down and why. I think the book captures that, but ultimately that will be for the readers to decide.

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Pretty much like your situation. I am shunned and have no contact with anyone except my sister who still Amish. She is married and has three children. We write a few times a year but we do not really know each other anymore. I have not seen her for 12 years. I hope to go visit this fall. I am allowed to stay for the day but am not allowed to eat at the same table with her or any other church member. She is not allowed to touch me or take anything that I hand I hand her. Probably the same among the Hutterites.

Focusing on education, primarily. Modifying the foundation formula to be more generous to schools to provide updated equipment, as well as better salaries for teachers. I'd also like to see Missouri move to a ranked-choice voting setup, to allow people to accurately represent themselves without feeling like their vote is powerless.

How do you feel about the alleged misconduct of Governor Grietens?

I'd like to see the judicial process move forward on it, and keep the politics out of it. The House is currently doing an investigation; that's fine. I feel like trying to set a trial date for November 5th was stupid. If he broke the law in this manner, he should be subject to the appropriate punishments as set forth by Missouri law.

I don't know the guy, I don't know anyone involved. This is something worth investigating, absolutely. I don't know (or have an opinion) on whether or not he actually committed the crime, as I don't have enough information available.

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Its indestructible and bottomless resources… it’s quite the opposite and we are finding out the hard way

Two thoughts on this, mostly on the front of how people can and are rethinking billing structure:

1) This is where we come back to being a sharp consumer. Even after an ER visit, you patients can – and probably should! – try to negotiate, see what was actually provided, what other health plans pay for this care, etc. You can probably end up paying less than appears on the billing statement.

2) KHN is actually diving into the very question of medical billing. We’ve been partnering with NPR to crowdsource patients’ medical bills and then try to investigate what actually happened, why they cost so much, and what sort of weird charges and such get added on. It’s a fascinating project – our first story is the one about the $17,850 urine test, and the next will come out later this month. If you want to help us answer this very question, please send us your crazy bills! https://khn.org/send-us-your-medical-bills/

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There are nearly 10,000 inmates imprisoned in IL on class 3 or class 4 felonies that are not deemed particularly "serious". Do you believe these inmates should continue to be denied the right to vote?

[EDIT: I wanted to add that I really enjoyed your debate with Dershowitz back in November last year. That's when I started following you on Twitter even though I live in NY. I'd vote for you if I could.]

Do you think that Thiel chose Hogan precisely because he knew that the whole "isn't this hogan sex tape gawker court room scene just hilarious" aspect would overshadow his involvement to an extend? I mean, if it was just some random dude who sued gawker over something much less spicey maybe the public story would've been all about "how things work" when it comes to the incredibly powerful

Wow it's not quite that bad for me. I can visit, but can't stay overnight. Definitely take small gifts, even though I only visit once every 3 or 4 years (bottle of wine or chocolate or something). The worst part for me is having to listen to the speil from my parents about how disappointed they are, and how sad they are that I'm going to hell. Makes visiting really stressful so I almost never do.

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I'd also like to see Missouri move to a ranked-choice voting setup, to allow people to accurately represent themselves without feeling like their vote is powerless.

I'm a Missouri resident, and curious as to how you plan to introduce this to the state. Do you have a plan, or is this truly just a "Hey we should do this. Somebody do it." kind of thing as most people who present the idea on the internet bring it up as?

Do you think in our lifetime we will see a permanent settlement underwater? Not a base or research facility, but a place where the average person could live?

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I'm a little confused by this. A lot of the discussion around inflated medical bills has demonized hospitals and healthcare providers, but a lot of cause of this seems to be based on historical negotiating practices by managed care plans, and gross charges aren't relevant to most of the population (true self-pay may be the exception, but in my experience there is a sliding scale or self-pay discount policy already in place for most facilities).

If the hypothetical ER visit statement was for charges, then almost everyone is by default paying less than that because your insurer has already negotiated that for you, and if you are true self-pay then there is almost universally a discount or sliding-scale policy already in place by the facility. Are you suggesting that patients should try to negotiate further?

I don’t think anyone in any state should lose their right to vote based on a prior conviction.

Also, thank you for the kind words!

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Wow- yes! Many times in my life I have wanted to give up. It's a lot to juggle a family and a career involving so much travel and risk. The hardest time for me was after a Nat Geo expedition to Myanmar where I experienced a lot of difficulty with our team dynamics and incredibly difficult climbing. I came home feeling inadequate and frustrated. I missed my kids terribly. Ironically, it was their influence, and my own passion for the mountains that brought me back.

Thiel began looking for cases as early as 2011, but had trouble finding either cases that were viable or plaintiffs willing to publicly go against Gawker. But it's also important to see that from the second the rumors of the tape began to spread--in early 2012--Hogan was very public about his intention to go after anyone who published it. This was well-before Hogan and Thiel were connected. So Gawker's decision to run the tape--and we know they knew of Hogan's comments--was really the unforced error of the century. It's what put Hogan on Thiel's radar and gave him the opportunity he was looking for. There were then subsequent other cases that Thiel either explored backing or did back, in part because early on it was not so obvious that Hogan's case had legs to go all the way or that the verdict would be what it was (much of that came from more unforced errors Gawker made during depositions and the discovery process).

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The Amish probably have the strictest form of shunning. Glad you can visit. I have not been back and dread it but I want to see my sister.

So, I believe (I could be wrong) that Chapter 15 of Missouri's Statutes covers all of Missouri's election laws. If elected, making modifications to that through House Bills would be my first tactic. If that doesn't work, (or I'm not elected) a constitutional amendment could be put on the ballot with enough support which would require Missouri use Ranked Choice voting.

Thanks!

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It is technically possible. Even more so than a colony on Mars… Hence why my grandfather experimented with this premise in the early 1960s with Conshelf habitats

This is an important point to consider. Hospitals have what's called the Chargemaster rate – which is the list price. This is a far higher price than what insurers pay or what Medicare pays. If someone is simply paying for a service out of pocket and a) doesn’t ask a question and b) doesn’t get financial assistance, that person could easily be billed the full Chargemaster rate. (Hospitals are required to offer financial assistance for lower-income patients, but many don’t discuss it until the patient asks.)

First just wanted to say thanks for your twitter legal analysis from the federal prosecutor perspective, it's helped me a ton to learn and navigate all the Special Counsel news.

My question would be, do you think we should modify/add to the US Constitution in anyway? Perhaps updating the language for emoluments, or financial disclosures of Presidents, or strict prohibition from having a stake in corporations while in office?

Could you take that shape of water guy in a fight? What would be your strategy against a man-fish?

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For as long as I can remember, we've been talking about the outrageous costs of health care. As far as I can tell, there's near universal agreement that health care costs are ruining lives, holding back companies from growth, and crippling state government. Yet nothing ever seems to get done.

From your research, are there a few relatively simple changes we can make to the system that would give us meaningful improvements? Or is the only solution to scrap the whole thing and start over with some form of single payer or nationalized health insurance?

If I could make one change to modify the U.S. Constitution, I would insert a provision that overturned Citizens United and allowed us to have real campaign finance reform. We need to get big money out of politics, and if we did, that would go a long way towards getting special interests out of our politics.

I must say that I was not influenced by Stacy Allison. I think her career in climbing has been amazing but I was just never familiar with her story. My roots were in skiing and I was originally influenced by the likes of Kristen Ulmer and Wendy Fisher. As I got into climbing, I greatly admired Lynn Hill, Catherine Destival and Arlene Blum.

Yes, I have many former JW's who email me. A lot in common with the Amish when it comes to shunning, maybe even a little more severe in some aspects. Really sad and tears apart a lot of families. I was not allowed to attend my sister's wedding. Seemed so unnatural:(

Ooh, a tough question. On the one hand, I would hate to be singled out by the NRA or any other group as being anti-gun. On the other hand, I could lose all support if I don't come out in favor of gun control.

Thanks! This is the kind of tough question I was wanting!

I think the time to talk about guns, and their affects on peoples lives is whenever someone wants to have the conversation. I think asking people to "wait" for the "appropriate time" is just a way to never have the conversation. If you're afraid to have a conversation, you shouldn't be working for the public.

That said, I own two pistols myself. I recognize the emotional plea for wanting to ban firearms; I don't think that's a good answer, and there are several studies that show the effect of bans on guns are not directly attributable to a drop in gun violence. Other policies and initiatives that went along with the 1994 AWB were more helpful.

Still, it's too easy for someone to decide they're going to kill a large number of people. Law enforcement agencies should have tools, (such as the Red Flag laws being discussed right now) to proactively intervene when there's a threat to others, or a possibility of self-harm. This should go through the courts, and there should absolutely be a pathway to regaining those weapons once the danger has passed - whatever the criteria for that may be.

Closing the gun show loophole is another good idea. I have an idea, I'll float it here. Tell me what you think:

In Missouri, if you're a private gun seller, selling at a gun show, you are only allowed to sell to Missouri Citizens. (That's my understanding; I could be wrong. Feel free to correct me and cite a statute!) If Gun Shows were responsible for issuing a permit-to-purchase, you'd have background checks for every firearm sold at a gun show. (Gun show dealers, to my understanding, who are Licensed Shops, still have to follow NICS rules for background checks, even at gun shows.) The gun shows would work with the local sheriff's department to run a MULES background check to ensure the person is safe to buy a firearm. If they pass, they get a permit; they show the permit (and ID) to the guy at the gun show, and they get to buy the gun.

That's an idea, anyway. I'd also be in favor of raising the age of purchase to 21, or examining, (I haven't fully dived into it) a revival of Missouri's permit to purchase program that was removed around 2007.

Great question. Health care costs are a big, big public policy concern, and they have been for quite a while! But alas, in health care, nothing is ever simple. (The ACA was more than 900 pages!)

A lot of wonks have studied this: The big issue is that, compared to other countries, we simply pay a lot more for hospitals, for outpatient care, for prescription drugs, etc. Some people say single-payer, or an expanded public option is a good way to address this.

The ACA also pushed some experiments to try to pay hospitals for better outcomes, or to penalize them if people kept coming back sick. It also built an “innovation center,” whose whole job was to experiment with new ways to pay more efficiently for health care – moving away from the so-called “fee for service” model and instead “paying for performance.” We have seen some results start to trickle in, but nothing revolutionary yet. This week, though, officials from the Trump administration signaled they’re interested in trying to continue those experiments. So that could be something.

Drug costs are also of course a big concern – but so far, no one really knows WHY drugs cost as much as they do. (This is why states are pushing “drug price transparency” laws.) Other nations, like Canada, have cost controls, but those also come with their own tradeoffs.

Tl;dr: there are no “simple” changes to fixing the cost of health care. It’s a big issue, and one that lawmakers could tackle, but it requires lots of serious thought, effort, and time!

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Hola Renato! Who were/are your mentors or muses now and why you chose to study law?

Would you consider introducing civic workshops for high school students/grade school?

How was your diet down there? What kind of food were you eating for that time?

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Do you believe there could be merit in eliminating medicine from being advertised, through media or through doctors, making it illegal for doctors to take money to recommend a certain pill?

I cannot see how it possible contributes to the state of health of people in a country, while pharmaceuticals spend gigantic amounts of money on this. Then they feel justified to recoup that money by hiking prices to unrealistic amounts, screwing the people in need over some more..

Over the years, I've been fortunate enough to have many mentors in my legal practice. More recently, I've come to admire the work that Alyssa Milano and other activists do on a daily basis. Working with them to resist Trump has changed my life. Alyssa literally works every day behind the scenes to try to push forward a progressive agenda. People like her inspired me to spend more of my time doing the same thing.

I think civic workshops are a great idea, and some organizations in Chicago already put them together. Probably my favorite day in the campaign so far was visiting Seventh and Eighth graders at a Chicago school. I'm going to see them again a week from today, right before Election Day. We all need to spend more time investing in the next generation.

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In regards to Papsura, it took me nearly two decades from when I first saw the mountain to actually successfully climbing the peak and skiing the west face. I had years of gathering experience and the skillset to undertake that expedition. I tried in 2013 with a larger team and we were not able to get far on the mountain. In 2017, I was able to learn from the earlier failed attempt and went with a smaller team, a different time of year and climbed via a different approach.

The police reports, which you can pull out from the trial documents off the website of the Pinellas County Courthouse, suspected that the tapes were leaked by a rival radio DJ Matt 'Spiceboy' Loyd. He was never charged with the crime so we should be careful about pointing fingers, but as far as a best guess goes from both the FBI and the Tampa Police, that's it. Even weirder--weirder than this entire dispute being put into motion by a fight between two shock jocks--is that the lawyer who represented the brokering of the sales of the tape was a man named Keith M. Davidson, who later came to represent Stormy Daniels after her alleged affair with the man who is now the President of the United States of America...

Direct-to-consumer advertising is such a controversial issue, especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals.

We’ve seen drug companies use this to market drugs when they aren’t universally recommended or needed. Meningitis B is one example I’ve written about – it’s an uncommon disease that can be deadly (but is also treatable!). The vaccine is not universally recommended, because it’s such a rare disease (and such an expensive vaccine!). So its manufacturers (Pfizer and GSK) have pumped up advertising. It’s made doctors and some industry watchers pretty uneasy, and some experts argue that this kind of approach bolsters sales of health care that maybe isn’t necessary.

Many pharmaceutical companies and doctors would argue that money / donations don’t influence prescribing decisions. But it’s controversial, and there have been steps toward addressing it. The ACA created an Open Payments database that requires drugmakers to report what they give to doctors and hospitals, and it publishes them online.

There’s also been some really good journalism on this. ProPublica, another nonprofit news outlet, did a fantastic project called Dollars for Docs: If you want to see whether your doctor has gotten money from a drug company, I recommend their database! https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/

Why are there photographs of you? Where I’m from, the Amish do not allow you to take their photo. I’m assuming this varies by sect but all of the ones near us do not allow this

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issuing a permit-to-purchase

That's a different Idea I haven't heard before and certainly has some merit! It's refreshing to see someone not toe the party line and want to force bans on everyone. Maryland has a couple great Democrat candidates running for Governor right now but they all support the idea of bans and that just pushes people to vote for our Republican Governor once again(And in his defense, he's done a great job).

You may know Alyssa as an actress, but she works her butt off everyday organizing us. She coordinated our online response to Net Neutrality and the tax bill. She is working on a big nationwide project to take on the NRA. Every single day she reaches out to me and many other activists to discuss issues and plan strategy. She helped me see the power of online activism.

There are many activists that I work with locally who I admire, but the question was about mentors and I’ve learned a lot this past year from Alyssa’s brand of online activism.

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Most recently would be on the ski descent of Papsura in India. Our ascent took much longer than we'd hoped, the weather was a terrible white-out and we were exhausted. I handled it by trusting my teammates, behaving an internal focus to stay in the moment. I chose not to look down whenever possible to quell the fear of the exposure, and I forced my mind to compartmentalize and break up the descent into small pieces so as not to be overwhelmed. Breathing helps a lot as well. I find it keeps the panic at bay.

I thought he would seem much more angry than he ended up seeming. I spent enough time with him that if that had been the primary motivation, I think the mask would have slipped--if only for a second. Instead, he seemed very calm, very detached, very strategic about the whole thing.

The other interesting part of Thiel's personality is that he uses the steel man technique when arguing or explaining a complicated issue. This surprised me given that he had taken to calling Gawker terrorists and such. But really, he was always very open-minded when it came to discussing things. For instance, if you ask Thiel a question—about Gawker or Trump or whatever—he doesn't just pull up some half-formed opinion. Instead, he begins with, “One view of these things is that . . . ,” and then proceeds to explain the exact opposite of what he happens to personally believe. Only after he has finished, with complete sincerity and deference, describing how most people think about the issue, will he then give you his opinion, which almost always happens to be something radically unorthodox—all of it punctuated with liberal pauses to consider what he is saying as he is saying it. Even when he does describe his opinion, he prefaces it with “I tend to think . . .” or “It’s always this question of . . . ,” as if what he is about to tell you is simply capturing where his opinion falls the majority of the time when running a thought exercise on the topic, as if he is always in the process of deciding what he thinks. I found that to be very impressive and unusual. It was hard to be a lazy thinker around him.

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The photographs are from when I was living with my mother before I joined the Amish. We did not take photographs but the state was coming to check on us and my mother had given them a fake address, she was also afraid that if they found us we would be questioned and they would be in trouble. So they decided to take the photographs and give them to the caseworker. It worked, they never discovered that my mother had been giving them a fake address. She told them that it was against our religion to have government officials in our house. Whenever you inject religion into the equation it is easy to get away with things.

I believe in finding solutions that bridge divides and can gain support from everyone. I don't like the idea of bans. I do like the idea of responsible, safe gun ownership.

Thanks!

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Coolest thing was the being given the luxury of time underwater by becoming an aquanaut. It is the biggest obstacle and limitation coming from the surface. We broke the time barrier! The reverse is true too- we had a ceiling from which we could not rise above. To do so would create major DCS issues including potential death...

So I don’t know a lot about this specific case, and I would be hesitant to weigh in on particulars. But this latter idea has always been the argument advocates use to tout expanding health insurance – the idea is that if more people are covered, then there’s less uncompensated care, and the cost burden is more evenly shared.

Congratulations on your success! What do you think goes into the mentality of not-reporting-to-the-police? Outside of the failure to report such actions, were other members of your family/church/society/etc supportive of you speaking out?

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I want every politician to support funding CDC research on gun violence. Surely studying the factors and outcomes can help lead to a decrease. Gun violence should be treated like drunk driving in the 70's and 80's. We weren't removing cars, we had a campaign and studies to decrease the impact and occurences, with ads and awareness and studies.

I'm totally jealous, it had to be such an amazing experience! Were you ever afraid of the potential death factor? Metal groans in the middle of the night hard to get used to kind of thing... What kind of sea life did you get to see??

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Thank you for doing this! Do you feel that the insurance industry, as a whole, contributes to the rising cost of healthcare through the process of re-insurers, malpractice insurance (which could also be blamed on our litigious society), and the such? Meaning, do you believe that there are significant factors outside of the primary service of healthcare (a nurse or doctor treating a patient) that contributes to the overall cost and if that cost has escalated at a faster rate than say the cost of the primary business of healthcare?

Hello:) Thank you for this very important question. There is so much more to my story but it was not possible to put it all in that AMA. A little background. My step-grandmother and my mentally challenged aunt were also living at home with my mother and stepfather. They were severely abused. I went to the police first to try and get them removed from my mother's custody but the police were so hesitant to do anything because of the religious aspect. I asked the policeman to pull up my aunt's dress and look at the bruises on her legs but he told me that he could not because it would violate religious freedom (my mother dressed her in Amish clothes). I then asked for a female officer to be brought in to do it but they never did it. I was exasperated and went to the police 3 times. I could not get them to do anything. My grandmother died not long after and my aunt died about three years ago, about the same time my memoir was published.

It is too easy to hide behind religion. When I reported the Amish bishop I was met with much of the same attitude "We have to be careful not to infringe on religious freedoms" until he escaped into Canada. At that point, I believe they realized something was very wrong. I really love that our country has religious freedom but I think we need to be careful that religious freedom does not trap victims and make it impossible for them to get help.

By the time I had left the Amish I was numb and felt I had failed my aunt, my step-grandmother, and the bishop's children. I could not save any of them. I got pushback from every angle, the Amish, the police, adult protective services and of course my mother and step-father. I was the only one trying to help any of them. The only one helping me was a non-Amish lady. It was devastating. Nine years later I wrote my memoir in a last ditch effort to raise awareness. I barely expected anything to come of it but something was set in motion and now three years later the bishop is in prison, people from my hometown have read my book, I have found my long lost brother and I am helping people from all over the world through email.

I think our culture's mentality of "mind your own business" plays a big part into why child abuse cases are not reported. They think it is not their business and may even fear other people will remind them of that fact if they start to meddle. Also many believe that CPS will not do anything even if they call. There definitely needs to be a big overhauling of the CPS system.

I know in my case, the people who apologized to me and told me that they had known are truly some of the kindest people you could ever meet. It is not that they were bad people, today they are really good friends of mine :) I think they truly just did not know how to help. I hope that answered your question :)

If the Dickey amendment could be affected by the Missouri State House of Representatives, you better believe I'd be all aboard allowing the CDC to research gun violence.

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Anything worth doing has some risk. Explorers mitigate what they can, plan for any contingency and “go for it” knowing to expect the unexpected. Death is an inevitable part of life. Living life is what we must never avoid.

That’s a really great and interesting question. And we know that we spend more on overhead than do other countries with less complex health insurance systems. (I went on a reporting trip to Canada last fall, and that was a point that came up again and again – their billing and admin just costs a lot less than ours, because they need fewer people.)

BUT the issue economists point to again and again is the price per unit of medical care. It’s just higher here than it is in other countries. And if we’re interested in addressing health care costs in the United States, that’s the key area to emphasize.

I think one of the weirdest things I've seen was when AJ Daulerio joked around during a taped deposition about drawing the line at publishing a sex tape if the celebrity was under the age of four.

Do you get the sense that many people and institutions still shoot themselves in the foot this spectacularly on the regular? One would think with the advent of social media people would become more wary of saying completely stupid things.

Have you ever been present for one of these moments where you thought "I absolutely cannot believe I just heard that."?

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That sounds like a very compassionate view on your part of those people who knew. Have you always been able to see you at that way or were you angry at them for a while?

The "gun show loophole" does not exist. It's just another way of saying background checks aren't needed for private sales between individuals. There are states that require background checks for sales between individuals but it's impossible to enforce. The only way it would be possible to enforce background checks on private sales would be to later implement registration, and this wouldn't stop criminals from doing illegal private sales.

As a side note, the strict wording of the law in some states that require a background check for private sales actually requires it not just for sales, but for all transfers of ownership or possession, even temporary ones. If I'm walking through the woods with my buddy and we come across an obstacle of some sort, the safe thing to do is for me to hand him my gun, then I go over the obstacle, he hands me both guns, then he climbs over. That way, you aren't holding a rifle while trying to climb over something. In some states, that safe procedure would be considered a transfer of possession and would be illegal. Hell, even something as simple as trying your buddy's gun out at the range or borrowing it for a weekend if your hunting rifle is broken would become illegal in some states. In very serious cases, if a person who owns a gun is going through personal difficulties and wants to give the gun to a friend or family member (fear of an abusive spouse using it, or they want to get rid of it because they are suicidal, for example), it adds an extra barrier and makes it much harder to take the gun off of someone else's hands. Now, there are very few police officers who would actually arrest someone for simply holding their buddy's gun, but the fact that some states technically make it illegal is a problem, and it can be tricky to word the law in such a way that it doesn't criminalize these acts.

There's no question that that comment, made in a deposition in late 2013, turned out to be catastrophic to Gawker three years later when the case was put in front of a juror. The chapter that I tell that story in in the book is about why you need to both know yourself and your enemy (borrowing from the concept by Sun Tzu). Gawker both had no idea the enemy they'd made in Thiel, had no real understand of how committed Hogan would be and worse, they did not understand how they might come off in court. The result was that they did and said things that came back to haunt them when their fate rested in the hands of some ordinary people in Florida.

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I was angry for at least the first 10 minutes. I cried. But I could see the pain and guilt in their eyes and just could not be mad at them. Being mad at them would not accomplish anything.

I answered this elsewhere, but you're right about it being about private person-to-person sales. However, if you're going to an event, setting up a stall, and laying out things you want to sell, you're pretty close to a business, and I think it'd be okay to have the gun show facilitate background checks before people buy those guns.

No law fixes every problem; expecting a law to fix all issues would be, in a word, silly.

Thanks for your input!

Q:

Yes- in every ocean. There is an average of 34,000 pieces of plastic per square mile of ocean… A testament to our complete disconnect with the impact we are having on our ocean

So I can’t tell you about your specific insurance / hospital. BUT this is a pattern the Wall Street Journal has looked into, and their report is very much worth reading. It seems that some hospitals and health care providers are discounting services if patients pay cash upfront, rather than waiting for insurance to pay. One reason that I find particularly interesting: It cuts down on the administrative work of processing an insurance payment or collecting money later on.

My great grandmother left the Amish community when she was 16. I wasn’t old enough to understand what that meant, and I wish I would have asked her about her experience coming into a non Amish society. I’m sure you’re experience is drastically different than hers was because we live in a completely different world. With that being said, I have a few questions I wish I could have asked her before she passed.

What was it like to come into a modern world?

Was it overwhelming to transition to this way of life?

Are there any things that carried over from your Amish life to your non Amish life?

Is it hard to break any biases that were ingrained in you when you were growing up?

Do you ever fear that you made the wrong decision when you left the Amish community?

How hard was it to leave everything including family, friends, and belongings?

And finally, how hard was the decision?

Sorry for asking so many questions! These are questions I always wanted to ask, but never got the chance to.

Q:

Permit to purchase is a great idea! Run with this as a demonstration of your ability to find meaningful and productive compromises! Good work!

What kind of equipment did you live/travel in during project 31? How long did descent/ascent take at the beginning/end?

Q:

I'm not sure I convinced them, so much as the fates aligned. I happened to get an unsolicited email from Thiel in late 2016--he had read some of my Gawker columns and suggested we get dinner sometime. I got an email from Denton not long after saying he'd read some of my philosophical writing and wanted to know if I wanted to get together. That I was talking to both of them I think was intriguing to them both, and also meant the other would want to keep talking for fear that the project might be too heavily weighted by one side. I also kept the project's direction really open for a long time--was it a book about media or technology or these two characters or was it about revenge? I really didn't know, but that allowed me to ask about a wide range of things so it never felt super invasive or "gotcha"-y. Denton preferred to do his interviews over chat, so our process was also much less of an imposition. Meanwhile, I think Thiel is quite proud of what he had accomplished and was tired of the very biased reporting around it.

I often describe leaving the Amish to being teleported from the 1600s to 2000s, it was very overwhelming for about 6 months. Things I carried over are cooking, doing crafts, I do not use swear words:) I am not sure if I have biases or what they are but most likely. I do not regret leaving the Amish, but like most Amish who leave I have had the recurring nightmare that I died and went to hell a few times.

It was extremely hard to leave the Amish. I did it once, but always say that if I had to do it a second time I could not do it. Some people leave and go back and leave and go back several times.

The decision to leave was extremely difficult. In fact, I did not decide to leave until after I had been to the police and the bishop told me to call off the investigation. In that moment I removed my head covering and stomped on it. This was the bishop of my church, he had assaulted me and now was telling me what to do for the sake of my soul? Something just clicked in that moment and I realized something was very wrong.

Q:

I floated it past a few friends first; they liked it. I'm hopeful that seeking compromise and listening to both sides of an issue, and trying to find common ground will be more prominent in Missouri Politics.

It sounds like you and your mom were not Amish until she married him? How did an English woman end up marrying an Amish man? How old were you at the time? Was it a major culture shock to live the Amish way when they first got married?

Q:

As one of your former professors, I'm curious - how are you going to support education in Missouri? Specifically the funding of the A+ program and the new "Core 42" mandate that allows students to graduate with a Bachelor's degree and never take a basic computing course.

“Gawker is not in the business of holding back information,” Gawker’s managing editor, Emma Carmichael, would later say in her deposition. If they got it, they ran it. A Gawker writer would defend a similar story a few years later by saying, “Stories don’t need an upside. Not everyone has to feel good about the truth. If it’s true, you publish.” These people had come to believe that “truth” was the governing criterion, and that the right to publish these stories was absolute. As far as their experience was concerned, they were correct: There had never been serious consequences. They had called every bluff. They had published what every other media outlet would have deemed unpublishable and not only walked away from it—the audience loved them for it.

Of course they knew that running stolen footage of a naked person was not exactly right. Jezebel, a Gawker site, had made a name for itself defending women against every kind of slight, defending their rights to privacy, defending them against men who tried to victimize or bully them online. Jezebel would define its views more clearly in outrage over a rival blog that published a controversial story about someone’s sexuality: “Don’t out someone who doesn’t want to be out. The end. Everyone has a right to privacy. . . .” Except Peter Thiel, and now Terry Bollea, apparently.

Less than two months before the Hogan piece, a Gawker writer who would later become the site’s editor writes a piece condemning the rise of “fusking”—the practice of stealing photos from online accounts and posting them. In it, he rejects any attempt to blame the victim, or any excuses made for the “behavior of thieves and creeps” when they steal people’s private things. Gawker had seen the anger and outrage about Hunter Moore when it had written about him and his media site built around so-called revenge porn. Commenters even cheered when Gawker reported that the FBI was investigating Moore. Yet when that tape arrived to its SoHo offices, Gawker would twiddle it down to a highlight reel and run that naked video of Hulk Hogan in front of an audience that numbers in the millions—a video not just of Hogan, but also of the woman he was filmed having sex with, who also had not consented to its publication. Gawker would promote it to their Facebook fans: “It’s probably time you watched this snippet from the Hulk Hogan sex tape with a woman some claim is Bubba the Love Sponge’s wife. Work’s over. You’re fine.”

So, my story is complicated and very unusual. I was 4 years old when my mother met my step-father. Neither were Amish. When I was six years old my step-father decided we should start dressing like the Amish. It was a gradual transition. I think my stepfather thought that if we started dressing religiously no one would ask why my sister I were not in school, why we had no friends or why we were rarely seen in public etc. It worked. My stepfather was in his late 40s and had been wanted for child molestation about 15 years before my mother met him. He escaped arrest by fleeing to Alaska and working on the fishing boats for a few years. After that, he was a gold miner in Northern Arizona and that is where my mother met him.

By the time I was 9 years old we looked fully Amish. We had learned to sew the clothes and traveled around in a motorhome selling crafts that we made. My sister and I worked long hours. When I was 11 we moved to the ranch in Northern WA, my sister and I were only let off the mountain to help sell things or bring supplies back to the ranch. It was a nightmare that would not end until I was 19. When I finally did go to the Amish community It was not that hard for me to adjust because I had dressed Amish for most of my life and was badly abused. For the first month, it seemed like a breath of fresh air. My sister and I were accepted into the Amish because of our obedient natures. It would be very hard for the average person to join the Amish, very few have ever joined the Amish from the outside world.

Q:

Hi! Thanks for the question!

First, I think computer education should start in grade school. And I want to see teachers make higher salaries. I was speaking with the president of East Central Community College in Union the other day. His name is Dr. Bauer.

(I really wanted to call him Jack. Okay. Bad joke. Moving on.)

He was talking about how higher education funding has been slipping. A few years ago, it made up 33% of their budget. It now makes up something like 22%. (Rough numbers; don't quote me on those.) He also said that A+ is not being fully funded. I'd like to reverse that.

I'll be honest - I need to read more about Core42. I know my fiancee has mentioned the program (not by name, but close) and has been enthused by it, but I need to know more about it before I can talk about its benefits. I will say, if you don't know how to use basic productivity software or work your way around a computer before you graduate middle school, I think we're failing our students.

I suppose that depends on who you want to be and what kind of career you want to have. Personally, I think it's best to be really good at 3-4 distinct things. This was you have different competencies you can expand or contract based on need, the market, interest, etc. But that's still small enough to develop a solid reputation for excellence in. If you're good at 500 things (if that's even possible) it's hard for people to understand what you do.

That is funny. I actually watch that video quite often. I think it is pretty accurate. Of course, it is silly and the costumes are ridiculous but the overall message is quite real. Many Amish are in competition over who can be the most humble, this leads to a lot of bickering and a lot of discontent.

Q:

Haven't read any porn bills, so I don't have a stance on it. I vaguely remember hearing something about one, but no details. Sorry.

I think the judicial process should figure out what did or did not happen, and punish or acquit as appropriate. I think the House committee should do it's job without press interference, and work quickly to move past this in as honest and straightforward a way as possible.

Hi, what’s the hardest thing about conveying your experience under or at the sea via film? Thanks! You have the most incredible job.

Q:

I started out with very strong opinions (I'd written about Gawker in my first book, Trust Me I'm Lying and also in my Observer column). I'd also been attacked by Gawker several times and the subject of some preposterously inaccurate stories. So I actually went into the book with a bit of a bias, but I found myself considerably softened talking to Nick, talking to A.J, reading what many of the writers wrote in their eulogies of the site. What I tried to do in the book ultimately was remove judgement as much as possible and just show what happened. I think that's a more important lesson.

Whether Gawker deserved what happened to it doesn't change what actually happened and to me that's where there is something to learn. How did Thiel do this? What were his motivations? How did no one suspect it as it was happening? Why was Gawker unable to fend him off? How did Gawker actually work as a company? What were its motivations for publishing the story? Why has the coverage since been so slanted in their favor since losing? Those were the questions I tried to answer.

Yes, I am/was fluent in the language. That was my main hurdle when I went to the community. My sister and I were told right from the start that we would have to be fairly fluent in the language before we could be baptized and start dating. Being teenagers our very lives depended on learning the language. If an Amish girl does not have a steady boyfriend by the time she is 20 she is pretty much destined to be an old maid. It took me about 9 months to learn the language. I did it by writing down 20 words a day and had the school aged children teach them to me. The children were amazing tutors and loved feeling important.

Q:

Gun reform is probably the biggest one. I don't want to call for a ban on the AR-15 or associated weapons, I don't like the idea of talking about an "assault" weapon's ban because it's too easy to get lost in the muck around the conversation.

I probably wouldn't vote for a ban unless there was overwhelming evidence that it would be beneficial, too. That's one of the primary ways, I guess.

Ocean is such an alien world, alien concept, alien sensory input, that conveying to someone who hasn’t pierced the blue veneer the beauty, fragility and importance of our life support system is very difficult. It’s like trying to explain the properties of a super nova to someone who never took astronomy

Q:

One of the narratives about the Hogan/Gawker/Thiel saga has been, in its distilled form: Since Peter Thiel's financial resources far outpaced Gawker's, he shut down the company (personally, I see it as more nuanced, but fair enough). Then the narrative goes on to talk about how dangerous this is for journalism. What's your take? Is Thiel's involvement in this case an inauspicious omen for journalism? Does Thiel himself reveal any kind of dislike for the free press? Any predictions for how this case will be impacting the media ecosystem 5-10 years from now?

While you were underwater, what where your experiences with Noise Pollution; how does your research intersects with Noise Pollution?

Q:

The central question of this story to me is, who was the bully? Was Thiel the bully or was it Gawker? Was Peter the billionaire who destroyed a millionaire? Or was he a righteous man who attempted to use his money to solve a problem that only power and money could solve? Was it the media outlet that thoughtlessly outed a then-mostly unknown tech investor? Or was it the billionaire who spent millions plotting against him for it? Was it the website who loved to out gay men or was it the team who would back Trump in the 2016 election, and in the case of Charles Harder, write an 11 page letter threatening to sue Michael Wolff for his book about Trump? Was it Denton who never apologized, who ignored judicial orders or was it Thiel, who never showed his face until after his revenge was complete?

It depends on where you sit, but one thing that has been lost in the coverage since the verdict: Gawker thought they were winning until suddenly, they lost. It was Gawker who had filed endless motions and appeals, who had fought Hulk Hogan with scorched earth tactics, and never apologized for obtaining an illegally recorded sextape and publishing it for more than seven million people to gawk at (and then spent $10M+ vigorously insisting it was right to do so). There was a moment in mid-2014, when Gawker’s lawyers threatened Hulk Hogan, telling him that it was his last chance to drop the case before they went after him for attorney’s fees. More than anything, what the jury and the judge reacted to had been their arrogance. The verdict reflected that.

Nick Denton told me, “The idea that Thiel was terrified of the next Gawker piece is still absurd to me—and given how things turned out, we had much more to fear from him than the other way around." But it wasn’t that absurd at the time, when they were a website with hundreds of millions of readers, when Gawker was the site that had never been challenged in court and published whatever it wanted, Thiel believed that Gawker’s power was partly in pretending that it was more powerful than it was. Now that they're gone...it looks different.

As for who is the bully now? As I said, backing Trump and some of the clients Charles Harder has taken on since give me pause...but that doesn't have the power to rewrite where things were in 2007.

I am from the very strict Amish. In my community, the only sex education that was given was by the mother or older sister on the day before a girls wedding. This I was told because they figured my sister and I were more accustomed to hearing conversations about sex. It is taboo unless you are married. Unmarried people are not even allowed to talk about pregnancies or acknowledge that someone is pregnant. Of course, at a certain age, you start figuring things out but you are not allowed to talk about any of it until you are married.

Q:

I don't think that this has been asked but what are your views on abortion.

Another toughie. You guys are great and on fire with these today. Thanks for your question.

Gonna give you the TL;DR answer first; I hope you read the whole thing, though.

tl;dr: Abortion should be legal, and it should be rare.

The long answer: I'm not a fan of the idea of abortion. Not from a religious or ideological perspective, but from a human emotion perspective. Nobody likes having an abortion; anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is using the experience as a shield to keep themselves from hurting. I've talked to people who have had abortions; it is not a pleasant experience, and it is a tough, hard, trying time in their lives.

And the decision is never made with any flippancy. (Which is the most common way I have seen it portrayed.) When an abortion happens, it sucks. It's one of the worst experiences a person can probably go through, and a lot of people go through it alone. Ostracized by family, and friends, neighbors and co-workers.

Better sex education, better access to contraceptives, and focusing more on getting men to be more responsible about their sexual health and practices is the key to reducing abortions. Not making them illegal. They were illegal once upon a time. They still happened, and they caused a lot more heartbreak then.

RE Weed: I signed the petition, I wouldn't vote to criminalize it; I'd be in favor of decriminalizing it and releasing those who are incarcerated solely on a possession charge.

Boat noise, machinery noise, living in a sort of echo chamber makes these things even more evident. Imagine what that does to sea life, especially those animals much more sensitive to noise than we are, such as cetaceans ...

Q:

Hey Ryan, since Machiavelli said that conspiracies are weapons of the people, why do you think there are so few of them today?

How are you so prolific? What systems/routines had the most impact on your life?

When people say the majority of the earth’s oceans are unexplored, what does this actually mean and do you think there are as to yet undiscovered creatures that will shock and amaze the world? I’m thinking dinosaur level here.

Q:

One of the things I explored in the book was why we seem to have this aversion these days to secrecy. A lot of people have said, "Why didn't Peter go public with what he was doing?" The other way to think about that is why the fuck should he have to? This idea that you have to tweet about every thought you have, or write a press release about every opinion or place is not only a ridiculous feature of our social media age, but it's bad strategy! Gawker wanted Thiel to have to expose himself so they could have been better prepared to fight him in court about it. The line from Napoleon is "Never do what your enemy wants you to do for the reason they want you to do it." If you were plotting to get Trump impeached, should you have to give him a heads up?

The other reason is I think we see few conspiracies is related to the first point. People are afraid to get their hands dirty. They like signing petitions, walking in marches, changing their Facebook profile picture in solidarity...but real change is often brought about by nasty means. Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Acts...but he was a corrupt asshole. He also knew how power worked and how to wield it. Part of the reason I wanted to write the book was to show how conspiracies work, and how they can be used for good and for bad.

When they become teenagers they do. Somehow they know not to talk about it though. If someone does say something they are talked to by the mother or father. In my community, it was common for unmarried girls to avert their eyes so they were not looking at the pregnant lady's belly.

Q:

So, there are a lot of memes going around about healthcare. I've got friends all over the world, and they both extol the virtues of our healthcare system, and berate the problems. It's interesting to hear praise and condemnation in the same breath!

I look at it this way: Societies are generally judged on a few things, but one of the most important, to me, is how they treat their sick and feeble. In the wealthiest country in the world, with some of the brightest minds on the planet, and with the most entrepreneurial spirit, how is this not something we've solved already?

I want to see (and promote) more access for healthcare. The US seems to be moving towards a single payer system with insurance taking a "more cosmetic" method for dealing with things.

But there's no "magic key" to fix healthcare issues. We have bad eating habits in the country. We have people working too many hours, in dangerous situations. We have poor people avoiding doctors until a situation is dire, and we have people who just don't understand what their options and choices are.

I don't have a bright enough mind to fix it myself, but I'd like to see us put more focus on patients, and less on profits. Obamacare has some benefits, but insurance isn't healthcare - and requiring it for access is just another barrier and red tape that we don't need.

Less than 5% of our ocean world has been explored to date. Perspective: the ocean represents over 99% of our planet’s living space, some 3.4BILLION cu2 of volume… even if you take the entire scuba diving layer into account as well as all the bottom exploration in modern history including my grandfather’s pioneering exploits, thats >5%

Q:

Ryan - I enjoyed two of your other books (Obstacle and Ego). One piece of constructive criticism I would have is that when you create the audio book, could you consider getting a professional book reader? I don't want to sound like a dick or anything, but the hardest part of the Audiobooks for me was that your voice was kind of... monotone-ish.

Children learn English in school, most finish school at 13 or 14. After school, you are only allowed to speak English when you are talking to an outsider. English is considered worldly. I do not know of any community where they do not learn English, but it is not the main language.

Q:

It's a federal issue, but no. I wouldn't be hesitant to support it. I'd say we'd need to look at the funding structure of it to ensure we can afford it, but the idea that it would bankrupt our country is kinda silly. Lots of countries offer a similar system and aren't collapsing into anarchy with riots in the streets.

Away from the cameras, the crowds, the events… when we spent time alone as a family or on expedition. Taking time over lunch in the carre of Calypso during lunch to have a laugh and chat about philosophy or non expedition related topics

Q:

What's the weirdest thing you've read in a book by the likes of Seneca or Marcus Aurelius? Those dudes came from different cultures.

Hi, James! I'm a St. Louis county resident interested in politics, especially in this blue-red-blue state.

What are your thoughts on merging St. Louis city and St. Louis county? (That's always a fun question to ask to start.)

Now, a hard one: Let's say the people of Missouri voted for A, but you very, very strongly believe B. The polls are close, and you hear a lot of good arguments for both sides, but the people ultimately decide A and you VERY strongly feel B. How do you vote?

P.s: You have an amazing life and it sounds like you enjoy what you do, that makes me happy for you 😄

Q:

I mean a few pages into Marcus's Meditations he congratulates himself for never laying a hand on his female slaves (that is rape them) so that's a pretty good reminder that these guys lived in a different culture. Rome was a dark, violent, twisted place. We can't forget that while some aspects of their lives were shockingly identical to ours--almost as if no time has passed--others are just insanely incomprehensible. I believe the punishment for parricide in Rome (killing your parents) was they would put you in a thick leather sack with a dog, a cat, a snake and a monkey and then throw you in a river to drown and be clawed to death.

I am doing the bachelor's program right now and have a year left. After that, I plan to go on and get my Masters to become a Nurse Practitioner. Right now my favorite fields are ER and Psychiatric.

Q:

What are your thoughts on merging St. Louis city and St. Louis county? (That's always a fun question to ask to start.)

Not living directly in St. Louis or the STL County area, I don't know the nuances of the problems. I know it would make managing the city easier, as some of the laws would be relaxed. (Like officials having to live in STL City itself) but I also know that benefit would be offset by tax-related issues.

Let's say the people of Missouri voted for A, but you very, very strongly believe B. The polls are close, and you hear a lot of good arguments for both sides, but the people ultimately decide A and you VERY strongly feel B. How do you vote?

I love the tough questions. First, let me tell you right now: When I vote on something, you'll have every reason why I vote for something. It'll be on Facebook, it'll be on my site, and it'll be on Twitter. I won't shy away from detailing exactly why I vote for something.

Secondly, if the data and arguments weren't enough to sway my opinion, (and I like to try my hardest to keep an open mind on any issue, and argue it from every side. I'm a human, though, so bias exists.) then I would probably still vote B. Your situation seems to imply that the vote was close, so I feel my obligation as a leader in the community would have necessitate that I lead with my values, and explain it as such to the voters. We are a republic; we vote leaders to make decisions on our behalf because we trust their approach. I would hope my constituents would feel that they could trust me, and listen to my explanation.

To put it simply, I'd vote B, and explain why.

That might get me voted out of office - but that's okay. We should elect people that represent our ideals, and if I don't represent them, then I'm not the man for the job.

I. Nose to nose with 2 orcas in PNG(Papua New Guinea) playing with and eventually feeding on a 7 foot shark.

II. The ocean is life. No blue no green. Without it we do not exist. If the ocean isn't healthy neither can we , neither can our economy… simple. … The ONLY thing that makes our planet special is the water on it

III. The kraken of course! Because the thought still scares the living cr-p out of people even today… LOL

P.s: TKU! I do. It's one of the most difficult jobs out there but the experiences are priceless and I cherish each moment!

AS an avid scuba diver myself, I used to love just sitting on a patch of sand at 80-100 feet and just watch quietly the reef for an hour. I imagine living underwater that long you had quite a bit of this enjoyment?

Q:

The truth is all of Stoicism is easy to say, difficult to practice. I think one of the harder ones for me is just not letting my temper or my impulse to react drive my behavior. To me, the Stoic is someone who is deliberate about what they do and say, just part of my personality is to be intense and always do, do, doing. Someone says something, I want to respond. There's an opportunity, I want to take it. There's something that needs to be fixed, I want to fix it. Someone makes an argument, I want to argue back. The problem there is that I'd be better off if I paused and really thought about the best response or whether a response was necessary or not. I would save myself trouble, heartache, frustration, etc if I could do this better. When I look at my journal entries, I tend to find this issue--or something related to it--is central to most of what I am struggling with or having problems with.

So, this is a hard question to answer because the Amish are not well versed on other cultures. I never heard anyone talking about Jews other than in the context of the bible and I do not remember ever seeing any Jews in our area. Sorry I cannot be more helpful in this area.

Q:

Two books?! That's a hard sell. Right now, non-fiction? Phew, I'm reading "Founding Rivals" by Chris DeRose, and it's a pretty great book.

Insofar as fiction goes, probably cheese out with Monster Blood by RL Stine. Or maybe The Demon Awakens by RA Salvatore. Both of those books were big for me, for different reasons. (Monster Blood gave me viciously cool nightmares for a while; Salvatore's book got me into reading Fantasy novels.)

Its home. I imagine you might feel the same. Sitting at the bottom watching the soap opera unfold in front of you is such a joy every time. Always different, always new characters, always surprising and wonderous.

Q:

If you could meet Marcus Aurelius what would you do and what would you ask him?

The best way to raise awareness is to talk about it and write about it on social media. Most change starts with people talking, forming groups and eventually making their voices so loud they cannot be ignored. Hopefully, that will happen one day. I am on the front lines trying to make that happen. For now, talking about it will start pulling back the veil of secrecy. Thank you for caring :)

Q:

I signed the petition to get it on the ballot this year; I think voters should have a say on it in this state. I've never done any form of recreational drug, and I personally don't like being around people who are high. But the evidence suggests that it is not a gateway drug, and it is no more dangerous to a person's body or activities than alcohol. So, just like I don't go to bars, I won't go to places where people smoke pot.

Releasing and dismissing charges of those in jail for marijuana possession makes sense to me. I know the local police chief doesn't agree with me, but he sees things through a different lens than I do, and I completely respect his view point. It is a nuanced, and well thought out position from his perspective. I just don't agree with his interpretation of the overall picture.

Hey Ms. Griffin, I can't imagine the strength you hold in your soul--its amazing! I am curious about a ton of things, and will be looking into your memoir, but am interested in what kind of PTSD you have experienced and how you've dealt with it? You said before faith is still a big part of it which, to me, is amazing that you've separated the predators from what they claimed to represent. Anyways, what has the mental health aspect of your recovery be like?

Also, as a social worker, what can be done at a societal (however micro the Amish society is) to encourage reporting of these incidents? I feel like that will end up being rhetorical, but is there any angle that's missing?

Thanks in advance!

Q:

I wish that was the mentality of politicians when I used to live in the show me state.

Did your sleep patterns remain the same while living underwater? I've heard that people devoid of normal stimuli will eventually settle into a different pattern than most of us are used to.

Also - what's it sound like down there?!

Q:

Well when rumors began to fly that someone was back Hogan, there were a few candidates. I don't know if Apple was one of them, but Denton briefly considered the possibility that the Church of Scientology was responsible.

For me, my faith has been my saving grace, literally. As a child, I always believed in God and always felt he had a purpose for me. No matter how bad things got there was always that little spark that kept me going.

As far as PTSD, at one point it was very severe. For about 2 years after I left the Amish I had a recurring nightmare almost every other night. I dreamt that I had not left the Amish, that it had only been a dream and I was still at the bishops house. I would scream and cry and wake up in terror. The nightmare was so real I had a hard time knowing which one was real. I would get up and walk around and touch things until I was convinced that I was in the reality. After about two years they came less often and now maybe only once a month or so. I also would jump and scream at loud noises or when people reached out to touch or hug me. I have gotten better and rarely have these reactions anymore.

As far as what we can do to encourage reporting..... I wish I knew. I think raising awareness is the only way. The Amish know that outside people do not know how the church works. Church members are told not to talk about church matters to outsiders. Only by shedding light on the darkness can we hope to change things.

Sleep? What sleep? (See above)... Mission 31 was run just like any extreme environment mission ie NASA… Military training and preparation and precise schedule are essential for everything to work. We had sleep schedules so we could keep up the grueling pace.

Sound- it’s not the silent world at all! Between the echo of machinery, the snapping shrimp on the hull, the booming and clicking of fish and other sea life, it was a cacophony of underwater symphonies

Edit: ah, I see you are Jacques Cousteau's grandson! Cool! Yeah, that probably had more to do with it than the movie...

Q:

I would say their hubris was immense, and a large reason for their downfall. Whether they should have run the tape is one discussion, but how I think for many years they did not take the case seriously--assuming that Hogan would settle, that he was an idiot, that people were on Gawker's site. Their decision in 2013 to ignore the judge's order to remove the article (though it was later overturned) was probably the height of that hubris, along with the comments made during the depositions in late 2013, which you referenced. Part of that aggressive exterior may have been motivated by internal insecurity. If you apologize, admit weakness, even admit wrong doing and you're an outlet that publishes first and verifies second, that puts a big target on your back.

Unfortunately, remembering my childhood makes me shudder, but, there are a few things that were positive. I think the best memories are being surrounded by the animals on the farm, my sister and I gave each one a name and we loved them all dearly.

Other good memories would be the times when I was able to sneak around and talk to my younger sister. For most of our lives, my sister and I were not allowed to talk to each other. If we were caught talking we were beaten. A lot of the times we had to raise our hands to talk. But sometimes we took chances when we thought my mom and stepdad were not around. I did not really learn to carry a conversation until I was 19 years old.

Probably the absolute most positive memory from my childhood is when I picked up a National Geographic in the late 1980s. I was around 8 years old. My stepdad was getting our car fixed and my sister and I were sitting in the waiting room. I picked up a National Geographic and it fell open to an article about some missionary doctors who were in Africa helping fight the AIDS epidemic. I did not understand what AIDS was at that time but it stayed with me for the rest of my life and it's why I am in nursing school today and why I joined YWAM ( Youth With A Mission) after I left the Amish. My entire childhood I dreamed of traveling to other countries helping sick people. I wish I could find a copy of that National Geographic.

Q:

The biggest issues would be, in no particular order:

Our voting system

Infrastructure

Local Economy

I'll do you one better, and give you three ways to address these:

1.) Improving highway 47, (which cuts straight through Union) It should be a 4 lane highway, not a 2 way highway. At the very least, it should have wide shoulders for accidents. 2.) Working with the county commissioners to better plan projects. One of our roads, (Denmark) was completely shut down for some of our residents because the bridge was closed before improvements to the other half of the road were completed; residents were stuck, for varying amounts of time, without a means of egress. 3.) Switching to ranked choice voting. Not everyone agrees, but I feel it provides a more accurate representation of what people want. 4.) Starting an incubator. Our local community college has expressed interest in it; they just need some support. That means local investors and infrastructure improvements. The state can help with part of that, and I feel like good negotiating with investors, (St. Louis is nearby, with a lot of investors) could help with that.

You're not a journalist, yet you wrote in this investigative report in your typical style drawing from history/prior works. Did you ever feel you were stretching to craft a narrative, for example seeing the book on ancient strategy on Theil's desk? Or were their things said in the interviews that lent themselves to the way you crafted the "story?'

Do you think this sort of thing happens with any frequency in other Amish communities? And is the normal reaction to not involve any outside authorities and just resort to shunning? Is there any other procedure abuse victims can resort to? Also thank you for exposing this stuff, as depressing as it is, I think it's better to get it out in the open.

Q:

Thanks for your thorough reply. I wish we had someone with as much concern for the job in my district. What is ranked choice voting and why do you feel it better reflects the people's will? Bonus Q: what are your thoughts on those three rather provocative billboards outside Ebbing, MO?

I grew up watching and adoring your grandfather. I know he invented the SCUBA system, were there any other inventions?

Q:

It really was insane to see Discourses on Livy on Thiel's shelf in his apartment (not his desk), given that I had just read it as research for the book. And for him to be able to reference the section from memory was just one of those things that made this feel somewhat meant to be. The other funny anecdote is that he gave me a copy of The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World thinking it was this obscure text that would make me realize what he had tried to do...and it happened that I'd already read it a few years before and had recently pulled my notes from it to see where there might be some insights for this book.

As for stretching to craft a narrative, I would say that the weird thing about the book was that there was actually too much material so instead of stretching the difficulty (or the shaping) came more from what not to include. A question above asked about who leaked the tapes, my decision to make this book about a conspiracies meant that the leakers identity was a lot less important, so it was left on the cutting room floor.

Your question is good though. Authors, journalists, lawyers--we're all telling stories and stories require choices and as a result certain things are obscured or emphasized to the reader. But I think this is better than say me dumping all the legal documents on you and saying: You figure it out. I mean, that's what I'm being paid to do.

It is prelevant in most all Amish communities. The more liberal the community the more resources there are for victims but those resources are very limited and usually consist of some form of counseling for the victim and predator. In very rare cases, maybe less than a handful are the police ever called in by someone who is still a member of the church.

I know victims from the very most liberal to the very most strict and the same basic techniques run throughout. The mother usually reports that her husband or brother or someone is molesting her children or teenage daughters. She is told that the ministers will handle it. The predator is brought before the church and shunned for a few weeks. After he is brought back into the church no one is allowed to talk about his crime ever again because he has been forgiven. The predator may be reported 5 - 7 times. Eventually the victim or the mother of the victim will stop saying anything. It usually does not do any good and it often brings shame on the victim.

In my community, the bishops wife and her 7 sisters had been molested by her father. He had been reported to the ministers 5 times by their mother. Then, the bishops wife's mother and her eight sisters had been molested by her father. Almost all of the bishop's wife's 11 children were molested by her husband, the bishop. A heartbreaking tragedy. Approx 24 out of 32 people were molested, 75%.

Q:

Who's running in your district? Maybe you should run. Think on it.

Ranked choice voting allows you to number your candidates from most liked to least liked. Here's a video.

As for the billboards, I have to be completely honest: I know nothing about it. I'm sorry. :(

Thank you! He and Emile Gagnan (his engineer friend from Air Liquide) co-invented the aqualung(SCUBA). My grandfather also had to invent the tools necessary to explore since none were available: underwater camera housings, the first underwater habitat, the first submersible for science research, helped develop modern side scan sonar, underwater lights, and more… It was by necessity that he did this.

Q:

When do you take notes about a book? While reading it or afterwards? Is that part of your daily journaling activity?

Although there are opportunities, it is still a difficult journey due to our continued neglect of the value our ocean brings. Hybrid carriers are often innovative, solution focussed, and you can make a living at it ;-) . We can always use more marine experts and conservationists, just giving you the heads up.

Q:

Hey Ryan, how do you think Gawker's hypocrisy at the time possibly influenced the court case? An example I have is Gawker media sites condemning sites for hosting J-Law nude photos, yet posting on their site that they were defying the judge order to take down Hogan's tape. You researched all the legal docs and did interviews, did that ever come up?

Do you think your experience will make you a different parent than you expected to be?

Q:

Hi James! I live in Texas so I doubt that most of your policies will affect me personally, but I’m a young person interested in politics. I follow the news and keep my eyes and ears open. Especially via Twitter and Reddit, but I’m too young to really do much about the things I hear about (too young to vote, too awkward to call state reps.)what do you suggest I do to help make my voice heard?

I do not have children yet but I hope to. I think my experience makes me a little terrified of being mean to children and whenever I have babysat or taken care of children in the past I have a very hard time being firm when I should be. When I do become a parent I know this will be one my greatest challenges. I truly hate to see a child's sad face.

Q:

Tweet, E-Mail, engage in conversation on Reddit and in person with your friends. Seek out opinions that are different than your own, too. That's important.

I really like this chart. If you recognize where your own bias lies, then you can use this chart to help find opinions that are different than your own, and stay informed on them.

Mostly, keep an open mind. And practice talking to your local state congressional reps. Talk with your city reps, too. Mayors, City Admins, Ward leaders, this is where the real governing starts.

Reactive to sunlight not so much. We had full spectrum light in the habitat which helped… I lost weight despite the additional calories. Lost sense of taste during and a few days after. Air was thicker to breath down below so coming back up seemed like air was thin. Took time to get back to normal sleep patterns and food. I personally didn't see any permanent effects so far except for wanting to go back ;-)

I've been to a Golden Corral restaurant at 5 different times in my life. Each time, there is at least two to three tables of about 8 to 10 Amish people eating. Every other restaurant I've ever been to in my life, I have never seen an Amish person eating. Why do is this? Also, is it appropriate to engage in conversation with them in public?

Q:

What are your qualifications for entering politics? What education and experience makes you an informed and effective fit for the job?

I am not sure why they were at Golden Corral. Maybe it was near a Greyhound bus stop? A lot of Amish travel to weddings etc. by bus. Amish generally do not eat in sit down restaurants.

I remember outsiders coming up to talk to us. It depends what you want to talk about. A lot of Amish people find the outside world fascinating, even if they would not admit it. The only times we really got annoyed was when people would start pestering us with questions or would try and take our pictures. I remember it made me feel like I was less of a human or unequal to them. I really hated when people would take pictures of me. I would be walking down the road with the children or walking to church with the young people and you could see people taking pictures as they drove by.

Q:

Insofar as qualifications go, I meet all of Missouri's minimum qualifications for the job.

As for why voters might want to vote for me? I'm a straight shooter when it comes to answering questions. I'm working on a BS degree in Software Dev; I've been a data analyst and software dev for the past 10 years without the degree. I've done data analysis for Hewlett Packard, and I have a lot of ideas that I feel people will resonate with.

If you're looking for a law degree, I think you'll find a number of politicians don't have one. If you're looking for a degree of any kind, I'd point out that I've had a successful career without one. If you're looking for me to be similar to the other people who've run for office before, I'd hope that I fail that particular test.

I don't want to be another "Politician" that's just like every other one, so I hope that, using that measuring stick, I won't measure up.

Well, trying to think. I cannot think of particular full recipes at the moment but can tell you things I enjoyed eating and making :)

I really liked the cheese spread we made to put on bread, I liked Jello with cottage cheese on the top, homemade ice cream, homemade pickles, fried chicken, haystack suppers, fried potatoes with tomato gravy and apple pies..there are more things but I cannot think of them at the moment :)

Q:

I'm open to suggestions. This is the one that best reflected how I feel.

An aquanaut suit is no different than commercial or scuba depending on needs of the task at hand… Once done with the particular dive, you take the suits and helmets or full face masks etc, take a shower, and put on team clothes ie tshirt shorts etc… it's like coming home after work, just in a habitat 20 meters under water. The Mission 31 videos on YouTube can best illustrate this

Q:

Do you think it’s possible to have gender equality in an Amish family or is the culture to skewed towards patriarchy for that to be possible?

I do not think there is a way to have gender equality in a society where the wife is expected to do what she is told. Where unmarried girls are sexually assaulted and then blamed for it. Many sexual assault victims are blamed, they are told they wore their dress too tight, did not cover enough hair with their head coverings or were too friendly. This is why it took me so long to come forward and report the bishop. The only thing that gave me the strength to report him was the fear that he was molesting his children.

A culture where you have to accept the ruling of the bishop and can be shunned if you argue or do not agree to your punishment will never be able to have gender equality or even basic human rights.

This is not to talk bad about the Amish. There are so many Amish who want to change things but they are trapped. If they speak out they could be shunned and could lose everything. The Amish are brainwashed to believe that if they leave the Amish they will go to hell. Many feel helpless and feel they have no choice but to go along with the flow of things.

I always wear a mechanical dive watch. In this case for saturation diving it was my go to since most computers aren't build for saturation diving, much less long stays… Lots of interesting tech- The PAM (pulse amplitude modulated florometer) was an interesting piece of kit (see youtube video) as well as the Ditson hand held acoustic imaging device.

Q:

Thanks for speaking out. The Amish are so romanticized, you never hear about the dark stuff.

Hi James; I'm not from Missouri but it's very exciting to see someone with a sense of humor running for office. One of the questions I would have for you is this: What do you think your state does well? What do you think the state does poorly?

There are so many people who do not want to hear the dark stuff. Not many news outlets want to report on it and when it does make the news it seems to get buried :(

Q:

Thanks for your question! What does my state do well? Farm. Agriculture is a huge part of our economy, to the tune of $88 billion. Our small farmers are fantastic people, and they are great stewards of the land.

What could we do better? A lot of things. I think communicating might be a good goal. I've got family that shuts down when they hear the name "Obama", and other family members that shut down when they hear the name "Trump". I think if we could open our hearts and listen more, and empathize better, our state would do better.

Hey there! If you had to recommend two books [one fiction; one nonfiction] that you love, or had some impact on your life, what would they be and why?

Also, what did you do to keep from getting bored down there?

Q:

You'll be hard-pressed to find me in favor of pretty much any ban unless there is a high-bar of evidence suggesting it would be beneficial in the extreme.

That said, no, I absolutely do not support a Muslim ban. I support a path to citizenship for DACA recipients; the sooner the better. If they've been here for 20 years, and they've been good citizens, that's enough for me.

Walls invite ladders and tunnels and lots of time spent washing off graffiti. There are better uses for $24 billion than a wall. Let's go to Mars, or back to the Moon, or some other cool, fun, crazy project that will bring people together.

Never had a chance to get bored… its the sea after all! 10-12 hours of diving and research, 1-3 hours of interviews and SITC a day, dry lab research, managing a aquanaut team as well as a film team …. No boredom here… no sleep either

Q:

How’s it going, James? Just life in general. I live in California, but I wish you good luck in your campaign.

First of all, I must say I am incredibly jealous. I am enamored with undersea life, aquanautics, and the unknown, and it would be my dream to do what you get to do.

My question is, after spending a long period of time underwater, are there any roadblocks now to increase that number to a longer period of time. If so, what are they? If not, when can we see a mission for a longer period of time?

Q:

Oh, pretty good for the most part. I've got a lot on my plate, but I think that's good.

Yes, human physiology, human psychological limits, accidents, economic, technology, supplies, support, etc are just a few of the obstacles. I believe it is possible depending on addressing those and other issues...

Q:

Heya James! I know I'm late here, but I went to school with you! It's Spencer, we played D&D at Jordan's and Patrick's houses in high school. I didn't expect to come home from work today and see your name on the main feed of Reddit!

Here's my question: how much are you going to pay me to hide all your dirty secrets? All of your DMing techniques?

Joking aside, it's great to see you involved in politics. I was a district delegate for Bernie myself.

Unfortunately not. I’ll add it to the pile of over 135 books I’ve accumulated and promised myself I’d read ;-)

Q:

Farmers should find it easier to sell the product of their toil in marketplaces, without fear of large corporate farms undercutting them and driving them out of business.

In your mind, are large corporate farms undercutting them through unfair advantages of some sort, or is it simply economies of scale? And if it's happening due to natural advantages of large operations, how do you intend to change that?

Like most things, it's a bit of both. Giving small farms access to larger markets, (through better roads and internet) we can help offset some of the large vs small situations.

There's a discussion in Missouri right now about large out-of-country owned businesses that are given tax-breaks and loans by their country-of-origin to go to other countries and supplant local businesses; there should be good ways to track that, and impose fines/restrictions on access to our markets. In the long run, allowing that much "free market" access (when Governments get involved, specifically) you'll drain local markets of all the cash, and then you're in a dangerous place.

It's a very difficult scale to balance, and requires a lot of input, ideas, and solutions from every side of the problem.

I don't drink much at all. Once a year, I invite some friends over, and I do some drinking, and write some free cards for people around the world. I get messages like, "My friend's wife just died; he could use some cheering up" or "I have nothing to look forward to this year; this will really help out" and "You're a terrible person for doing this, let's be friends."

So I don't see it as a negative. I drink responsibly, not to excess, and I want to help other people have a great holiday with something to look forward to. If people want to judge me negatively for that, I don't think I would ever be able to change their minds. :)

Long story short-ish: I met James when I was just in high school playing an online game. I had a horribly tough time throughout those years and even through college. Over each summer away from college I was homeless (I’m not sure he knew that), later after moving to California I had been in a car accident, I had been assaulted by my older brother, and I had then been homeless again in NYC for a short time before before I finally found a job and returned to school full-time, where I finally graduated with my associate’s degree.

Eight years later and I am in a much better place and life is not so much a huge struggle anymore. But what is important is that throughout those years, James always put forward the effort to stay in touch with me. And almost every birthday and holiday, he’d send me something, if even just a nice card with a message that cheered me up and made me feel valued and worthwhile, even during times when I felt the exact opposite of that. When I was trying to make it through my graphic design program at uni one year he even sent me my first pack of Prismacolour markers - supplies I couldn’t afford but really needed at the time. He knew my passion for art and he always tried to help me harbour it.

I was ashamed all those years for it, but I could never afford to send much in return besides cards. And even then I was flippant and flighty and unreliable in terms of being a good friend. But it didn’t really matter to James. He always sent one for Christmas or something from Amazon for my birthday, wherever in the world I happened to be.

Since this here seems as good a platform as any, I just wanted to take the opportunity to tell the world how great of a guy, and an influence on my life, James has been to me - and how outstanding of a person he is in general - to everybody really. I am where I am today, in some small part, because of James.

It’s really good to see you here. And I’m not sure why we fell out of touch, but that is OK. I hope you achieve your goal because you deserve it. You deserve everything you’ve given out to the world to come back to you tenfold.

Oh and I guess I have to ask you a question to post, sorry if awkward turtles since I’m no longer as clued in on U.S. politics:

Well now, I didn't expect to see you pop up. I would gladly accept one; send me a PM! And omg thank you for the kind words. <3

Q:

As a Missouri resident, I'm concerned about the Zhentarim's growing influence over government officials. The Harpers get some floor time, but when a member of the Emerald Enclave speaks up, they aren't given the same amount of consideration.

How would you bring a balance to a state where the densely populated cities lean left and are located at the extreme East and West borders with so many conservative leaning counties in between?

Have you ever been to Bobby's bar? I went there once and was very pleased with the cost effective beer. 1$ bottles!!!! That's like 6.50$ here in Canada. Keep up the great work in Missouri and keep the golden liquid flow. Also treat Nortek good because they bring you guys lots of money :)

No. There are some interesting studies about losing games and violent games and the way we trash-talk and interact with others afterward, but there is no long-term evidence from any study that such things lead to violent behavior.

Well. Other than throwing the controller.

Q:

California here. What is your stance on gerrymandering? Are you for it, against it, and what would you do to push your position forward?

Good question! There are some good reasons for some of the ways some districts are drawn; unfortunately, most districts are drawn for partisan advantage.

There was a study done, (don't have a link handy; it was shown to me by someone I work with; he had a printed copy) that showed redistricting done by a computer would have only shifted one federal seat, so that makes it seem like a trivial issue.

I'm for logical drawing of legislative boundaries with good justifications that don't rely on party. I think it should be non-partisan, and focused on ensuring that citizens are properly represented.

Thanks!

Q:

Hey! I'm actually a KC native, and I'm going to school in Rolla for computer science! In fact, I recently had an interview with KnowledgeLake about a week ago, so now I get to turn it around! Out of curiosity, where are you going to school?

It's a big question; I don't begrudge anyone their success, and I don't mind paying high taxes myself even though I'm not "rich". (My fiancee and I fall within the "middle class" range). I feel like tax relief is best applied from the bottom up, as those at the top of the income range do not spend nearly as much money locally. But it's not a one-size-fit-all answer; so few answers in life are.

Thanks!

Q:

Anything you can do to help enable direct-to-consumer auto sales?

Having dealt with dealerships in the past, they add nothing of value to the buying experience. And as a consumer, I can't tell you how great it was not having to mess with a dealership when purchasing a Tesla. I felt the same way again when I bought another one.

I've been interested in local government for quite a while, and the fact that this is an open seat makes it competitive. However, I was not planning to run; a woman named Patricia Schuba was planning to run, and I was going to offer her my support. She had to back out, though, so I decided it was time to put my money where my mouth was, so to speak.

Ranked choice voting is probably the first bill I'd work on, but education reform is where the bulk of my attention is going to be.

Thanks!

Q:

Mr. Cordrey,

As someone with farming experience, how do you feel about the massive CAFOs being built across the state literally adjacent to other people’s private properties? (Callaway Farrowing, Tipton East, Valley Oaks Steak). Would you support increased DNR regulations about these?

Being a farmer/raising livestock/growing crops/however you want to slice it and dice it should be about two things: Growing/producing good product, and being a steward of the land. CAFO's do neither of those things well in any sense of the word, and they go a step further by hurting local economies by moving money out of state, generally. (Not in every case, of course, but Callaway Farrowing, for example, was registered by a guy from Iowa as a local LLC to run these farms.)

So, we need to look at them carefully and make sure that they aren't abusing our laws to make it harder for local farmers to farm. That could include reducing tax-loopholes for these kind of agencies, or increased regulation.

Depends on a few things. If it's a light rain with no wind and the day is cool but not cold? Open is great. I love the smell of rain. If it's going to make the house hot and muggy, or if the wind is blowing hard, or if it's raining really hard, closed.

But TV off and curtains open so I can see the lightning. :)

Q:

Excited to make my first post on reddit. Anyways, what is your favorite kind of toothpaste? What kind do you have at home right now?

Hi! I'm a fellow Missourian here. Do you plan on doing anything about the roads if you're elected? For example the ones where I'm at have already had several fatal accidents this year, and nothing's being done about it.

Through our area there's a road, highway 47, which is a big pain point. I would definitely like to see it expanded, and to fix some of the issues we've got with our infrastructure projects. We need good roads to improve education access, (there's an open-enrollment bill for an area nearby, one of the congressional reps for that bill cites road safety as a concern. Instead of fixing the problem, he'd rather ignore it.) and improve our economy.

Thanks!

Q:

Hello James! I am a native of Missouri, I was just wondering how you feel about our states Capital and our Governor being indicted?

Hi! I liked Jefferson city; the Capitol Building is gorgeous, and the city is pretty nice too. I had a great pork chop at a soul food kitchen; it was amazing. Good corn bread, too.

As for the indictment, let the judicial process do what it does. I don't have enough information to have an opinion on it; but I'd like to keep the politics out of the court room as much as possible. Let the judge and prosecutors and jury do their thing, let the House do its investigation (as is appropriate) and let's all take a collective breath and let them do their work.

That's not a popular opinion in the Democratic party, either.

But thanks for your question!

Q:

You mentioned doing something about the farmers being ‘undercut’, but what if I , as a consumer and private citizen (or more importantly someone who couldn’t afford to pay more for groceries) wanted to go for a cheaper product? Would you essentially try to limit choice on what people eat or are you talking about cutting agricultural subsidies?

I don't want to limit anything. I want to keep large organizations from pulling money out of our state. CAFO's are an example of this; they come in, take advantage of Missouri markets, and bleed our economy dry while only contributing a small portion of it. There has to be a balance, because like you said: You need to eat, and you need to be able to afford to eat.

That's why I want to focus on education and the local economy in my district, and bring in new jobs that will help pump money into our local economy. Cutting subsidies harms your ability to buy low-cost food, but it might also make it less cost-effective for a large farm to pull money out of our economy.

These are big problems where small tweaks can make big changes. Thanks for being engaged and asking a great question. :)

Q:

I was born and raised in Missouri, and I’m excited to see a candidate who is passionate about education! I went to school at Mizzou, and graduated with thousands of dollars of student loan debt despite many scholarships I acquired and the job I had on top of my schoolwork and extracurricular activities.

How do you plan on making a college education legitimately affordable for the average student? Even better, would you consider relief for students who have already graduated with significant debt, such as reducing or eliminating loan interest rates, allowing students to pay for student loans pretax (like you can for FSAs, commuter benefits, etc), or increasing tax benefits for those paying towards their loans? This is impacting my future, delaying my goals for marriage, savings, and buying a house, and any help would be beneficial towards reaching those goals faster.

Student loan debt is crippling. Finding ways to pay for it are important; I think the Federal government is going backwards when it comes to education financing. (But that's not a surprise given who currently runs the department of Education.)

A good start is the Core42 option; we're helping kids get college credits in high school right now to help supplement what they need when they get into a college environment. Fully funding the A+ program would help. Improving work-study programs in colleges would also help, and finding ways to reduce tuition costs would be beneficial. There are some ideas for how to do that, (including rolling certain types of colleges into the K-12 model, which I'm not fond of.) but I'm not sure which is the best model. I'm open to suggestions, and talking about it. But I don't have a concrete or well thought out solution for everything.

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